Today's News

Thanks to an open date, it took two weeks before the Oliver Springs could bounce back from their narrow loss to arch rival Coalfield, but Wiley Brackett’s squad put on a show Friday night with an impressive 47-16 victory over Jellico.

For the third consecutive week, the Midway Green Wave took it to the wire before knowing if they would win or lose. Friday night, Midway kicker Caleb Splawn booted through a 29-yard field goal with two seconds left to give the Green Wave a 17-14 win over district and county rival Harriman.

Somebody forgot to tell the Rockwood Tigers they were overmatched in their District 3-A match-up against Greenback and the result was a surprising 28-21 upset win over the state’s No. 3 ranked Class A team.

Teenagers can be vicious, and an ugly message scrawled in a Roane County High School girls restroom last week was one such jab.
When English teacher Linda Choate saw the taunt, she took action.

Soon the room was covered with sticky notes filled with positive and uplifting messages to female students and staff.
“There is a widespread problem with cruelty among teenagers. This was one incident, but it is just one part of a wider problem that made me choose to try to change the perspective,” Choate said.

The government has until today — Friday — to disclose the names and addresses of law enforcement officers who were present the night Leon Houston was arrested in January.
Houston requested the information in his federal case.
Prosecutors objected to the disclosure, but U.S. Magistrate C. Clifford Shirley Jr. ordered the government to produce the information.

Harriman attorney Donice Butler might not have to face her accusers at a disciplinary hearing next month.
This no-go could have nothing to do with a continuance in the case, either.
On Wednesday, Butler said she is in the process of working to resolve the matter with the Tennessee Board of Professional Responsibility.
If negotiations go well, she said the hearing won’t be necessary and the case would be over.
Some former clients have accused Butler of wrongdoing.

A Harriman family is seeking $525,000 in damages from an Alabama bail bond company and two bounty hunters.
Attorney Scott McCluen filed the lawsuit in Roane County Circuit Court on Monday against Ruben Brown, Michael Anthony Henderson Jr. and Learnest Wilson.
They are accused of assault, aggravated assault, aggravated criminal trespass, false imprisonment and reckless endangerment.
Brown owns Affordable Bail Bonds of Montgomery, Ala. According to the lawsuit, he posted a $1,000 bond for a Kayla Inman in Montgomery Municipal Court in August 2012.

A couple of years ago, my doctor made one of those scrunched-up faces he gets when talking about my left knee.
It’s a face that says, indirectly, I’m looking at a bionic knee or two down the road.
Those of you who have followed me for the past 11 years or so know I’m no stranger to surgery. At least one of them saved my life.
But this is one surgery I don’t want to have.
Not now.
Not ever.
After last year’s talk with my doc, I backed down on my hiking. I quit trying to run. I put away my tennis racquet.

By CHARLES C. HAYNES
Inside the First Amendment
Robert Van Tuinen’s run-in with campus police would be a funny story — if it weren’t such a disturbing example of how freedom of speech is under assault on many American college and university campuses.
As reported in The Daily Caller and elsewhere, Van Tuinen, a student at Modesto Junior College in California, was stopped from handing out copies of the Constitution on Sept. 17 – the 226th anniversary of the signing of the Constitution.